Ruins of ancient mud-built towns and villages are to be found in several places, notably those of Hibis to the north of Kharga village, in the neighbourhood of the temple of that name, and those of Tchonemyris, near the temple of Qasr Zaiyan. There are also the remains of the old town of Kysis lying close to the temple of the same name, which is now known to the natives as Qasr Dush.
The Romans, during their occupation of the oasis, built several forts and castles, the exteriors of which bear a striking resemblance to the old Norman Keeps to be found in England.
The most important of these forts, a building for some reason known to the natives as Ed Der—the monastery—lies in the northern part of the oasis close to the north foot of Jebel Ghennihma. It consists of an enclosure some sixty yards square, surrounded by mud-brick walls ten feet thick and about thirty in height, with a circular tower at each corner and two semicircular turrets projecting from each of its sides. From its position it was evidently intended to guard the entrance to the oasis down the wady, through which the railway now runs. The fort at present is merely an enclosure, and no trace remains of any buildings in its interior.
Here and there in the oasis are to be seen small mud-brick buildings, the interiors of which have their walls honeycombed with the little cubical niches eight inches in each direction. These are usually found at some distance from any village or existing remains. They are generally considered to have been dovecots; but it has also been suggested that they were intended to contain cinerary urns.
By far the most interesting ruin, however, to be found in the oasis is that of the sandstone Temple of Hibis, a short distance to the north of Kharga village. This, which is the only temple or public building of any importance to be found in Egypt dating from the time of the Persian dynasty, was begun by Darius I, and completed in 424 B.C. by Darius II, as Brugsch has shown from the hieroglyphics.
About a mile to the south-east of the Temple of Hibis, conspicuously placed on some high ground, are the ruins of a small sandstone building, known as the Temple of Nadura.
A mile or two to the south of the hill known as the Gorn el Gennah is a small temple known as Qasr el Guehda—a name often locally pronounced Wehda. It consists of a small sandstone building, measuring about eleven yards from north to south, by twenty from east to west.
The temple itself lies in an enclosure of mud bricks, possibly of later date, entered on the eastern side through a stone gateway.
About three miles farther to the south lies the small temple known as Qasr Zaiyan, a much smaller building than Qasr Guehda. Like it, it seems to have been surrounded by a wall of mud bricks, forming an enclosure filled with small mud-built buildings.
I did not visit the Temple of Kysis, or Qasr Dush, as the natives call it, which lies in the extreme south of the oasis. For a description of this, and for a fuller account of the antiquities of this oasis, the reader is referred to the works of Schweinfurth, Brugsch, Hoskins and Dr. John Ball.